Wednesday, October 1, 2008

According to the Anderson Analytics GenX2Z College Poll, 60% of college students (ages 17-34) prefer Senator Obama while only 25% prefer Senator McCain.

Interestingly, the choice of Sarah Palin does not seem to have helped McCain much among female college students. Females were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to prefer Obama (62.9% of females vs. 55.4% of males preferred Obama while only 23% of females vs. 28.4% of males preferred McCain).

The overall 34% youth vote difference between the two candidates is larger than what has been reported in earlier polls among youth. To benefit from the lead, Democrats need to ensure that these students actually visit the polls on Election Day.

Tom H. C. Anderson, managing partner of Anderson Analytics, also noted one other point of interest in the data, "while six in ten students preferred Obama, this preference was even more pronounced among students at Ivy League institutions, where about eight in ten students favored Senator Obama."

Anderson Analytics conducted the online poll during the second to last week of September among 1,000 U.S. College students. Anderson Analytics' GenX2Z panelists are recruited locally at college campuses and on the social networking site Facebook.com. GenX2Z panelists represent over 400 U.S. Colleges and Universities and all students have confirmed .edu email addresses. The poll yields statistics with a confidence interval of +/-3% at the 95% confidence level.